Monthly Archive: February 2008

The first commandment about writing a book is to care passionately about your topic. For each of my dozen books, I have spent two years researching and writing the work, so you have to care deeply about what you are doing. If there’s any chance you’ll get bored along the way, don’t take on the project. If you lose interest, imagine how readers will feel. OK, how do you recognize the right topic? You can’t simply say, “I’ve always wanted to write a book,” you have to say, “I want to write a book about [fill in the blank].” The...

When last we looked in on the life of Edgar Bronfman Jr. (July 13, 2007), he’d just sold his Manhattan townhouse on East 64th Street for $50 million, a stratospheric sum that remains among the top prices ever paid in New York. He’d bought the 31-foot wide townhouse in 1995, renovated the heck out of it, then dwelt there starting in 1999. Edgar Jr., subject of my book, The Icarus Factor, now appears to be seeking an even faster real estate flip. Last month he paid $19.5 million for an eleven-room co-op on Fifth Avenue at 85th Street, with views...

Paolo Bruscoli, one of many artisans featured in Fantasy in Florence, has been chosen by the city as part of a twenty poster display at the railway station that illustrates the most representative local businesses for history and art handicraft. The station, known as Santa Maria Novella (SMN), serves as a gateway to the city for millions of visitors a year and offers a wonderful venue to introduce artisans as the celebrities they should be. Built in the 1930s by Mussolini’s Fascists, the station was among the first structures in what became known as the National style. The flat-roofed three-storey...